


May Cause Swelling

by curtaincall



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aphrodisiacs, Artistic Liberties Taken With Medicine, Established Relationship, Gratuitous Mentions of Necks, Humor, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Sex Sent Me To The ER: Celestial Edition, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), me: what if sex venom but it was very stupid, moron4moron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:53:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23182807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curtaincall/pseuds/curtaincall
Summary: He slithered onto the bed, wrapping himself around Aziraphale to tug him down alongside. “Ready?” he asked, flicking his tongue against Aziraphale’s jaw. “Still ssssure?”“I believe,” said Aziraphale, in a voice which was rendered a good deal less haughty by virtue of being somewhat breathless, “that I have made it abundantly clear that I’m—”Crowley bit him.An attempt to have a little consensual fun with certain aphrodisiac properties of demon venom results in an unexpected allergic reaction, a panicking snake, and a frantic trip to emergency.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 42
Kudos: 400
Collections: The Snake Pit





	May Cause Swelling

**Author's Note:**

> look, so summerofspock and attheborder both wrote aphrodisiac snenom (snake venom) fics, and i read them and of course went "what if instead of being sexy or tender this was just Very Stupid?" and this is the result.
> 
> Happy Evacuation Day!

“Are you certain about this?” Crowley asked.

“Yes,” said Aziraphale, a trifle impatiently. “I’ve told you already—” He paused. “Unless,” he said, more softly,  _ “you’re  _ not comfortable—”

“Oh, no,” said Crowley, quickly, “I’m on board. Totally comfortable. Just, you know, there’ll be some...side effects. Once I…”

“Bite me?” asked Aziraphale. “Yes, I rather thought that was the idea.”

Crowley swallowed hard.  _ Bite me  _ probably shouldn’t sound erotic, but it was Aziraphale saying it, which was pretty much all it took for Crowley, at this point. “Not just the...uh, the aphrodisiac properties. You also won’t be able to use your powers—do miracles, you know—for however long it takes to wear off. So if you change your mind, you can’t—”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” Aziraphale said, “and it doesn’t matter. I trust you.” He reached up to undo his bowtie, eyes flitting downwards in what anyone who knew him less well than Crowley might have mistaken for a demure manner. But the slight, smug smile that tugged at his lips revealed that he knew perfectly well how bowtie removal activated a Pavlovian response in Crowley’s brain, rendering him somewhat useless for anything other than an extremely specific purpose.

“All right,” said Crowley, and concentrated for a bit, and found himself down four limbs and up one tail.

“Oh dear me,” said Aziraphale placidly, undoing the buttons of his shirt. “It seems I’ve been cornered by a wily serpent. Whatever shall I do.”

“You could put a  _ little  _ more emotion into it,” Crowley said, slithering over. “I don’t feel very fearsome when you sound all blasé like that.”

“You don’t  _ look  _ very fearsome,” Aziraphale countered.

Crowley bared his fangs in response, and was rewarded with a slight shiver from Aziraphale. (He wasn’t totally sure whether it was a scared shiver or an aroused shiver, but he’d take either, honestly.) Encouraged, he hissed a bit.

“Ooh,” said Aziraphale, folding his shirt neatly and placing it on the bed. “Show me your tongue, serpent.”

Crowley obliged, flicking it in and out of his mouth and watching with satisfaction as a flush rose to Aziraphale’s skin. He was down to vest and trousers, standing next to the bed, and thus rather more upright and clothed than Crowley deemed ideal.

He slithered onto the bed, wrapping himself around Aziraphale to tug him down alongside. “Ready?” he asked, flicking his tongue against Aziraphale’s jaw. “Still ssssure?”

“I believe,” said Aziraphale, in a voice which was rendered a good deal less haughty by virtue of being somewhat breathless, “that I have made it abundantly clear that I’m—”

Crowley bit him.

He wasn’t entirely certain what reaction he’d been expecting. A moan, maybe? A sigh? A gasp?

What he  _ wasn’t  _ expecting was for Aziraphale to yelp loudly and jump off the bed, dragging Crowley along with him.

“What’s the matter?” Crowley asked, detangling himself from Aziraphale.

“That  _ hurt,”  _ Aziraphale said, clutching at his neck. “You didn’t tell me it was going to  _ hurt.” _

“It’s not supposed to,” Crowley said, slithering back upwards to take a look. “Part of the deal with the venom. Numbs the pain from the bite instantly. Wouldn’t do much good, would it, inspiring humans with lust, if their attention got drawn to being  _ hurt.” _

“Well, it doesn’t seem to have worked,” Aziraphale snapped. “Because I can assure you that this pain is  _ far  _ from numbed.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Crowley said. Aziraphale’s neck was red where he’d bitten it, the two puncture wounds showing clearly against a quickly swelling patch of skin. It didn’t, he realized with growing anxiety, look good at  _ all.  _ “Maybe it’s your, I dunno, your angelic nature, or whatever. Causing some kind of...allergic reaction.”

“Then can you  _ please  _ change yourself back and  _ make it stop?”  _ Aziraphale asked.

Crowley concentrated. Nothing happened.

“Well?” Aziraphale demanded.

“Can you stop  _ yelling,”  _ Crowley said, “I’m  _ trying,  _ only it’s not—it’s not  _ working.” _

“You  _ can’t change back?”  _ Aziraphale asked, voice climbing several octaves in the process. 

“You’re making me nervous,” Crowley said, “and I can’t—I’m not—I have to  _ concentrate  _ for it to work, and I can’t exactly give it full attention, can I, when half my brain’s taken up with watching your neck. Not in the sexy way,” he clarified. “In the that-doesn’t-look-good-at- _ all _ way.”

“Then can you fix it while you’re still a snake? _ ”  _ Aziraphale demanded.

“Um,” said Crowley. “No.”

“What do you mean,  _ no?” _

“After using the venom, I can’t...ah—change anything around me, for a while. No ability to influence the external world. Got to replenish, or something, I’ve never been quite sure why.”

“So you can’t heal me because you have some sort of—of  _ demonic refractory period?  _ And you didn’t think to  _ mention  _ this?”

“I thought that it might be more interesting for you,” Crowley admitted, “if you  _ thought  _ I could still, y’know. Affect you. While we...well.”

Aziraphale winced. “In that case,” he said, making a face, “I think I’d better get this looked at. By a doctor. Because it doesn’t seem to be getting better.”

It didn’t, Crowley realized. Aziraphale’s neck had puffed up rapidly and showed no signs of stopping, giving him a somewhat lopsided appearance above the collar. “I’d offer to drive,” he said, “but…”

“With the way you drive, I scarcely think being a snake could make it  _ worse,”  _ Aziraphale said. “But I can take the tube, I’ll manage.”

“Hang on,” said Crowley, “I’m coming  _ with  _ you.”

“Like  _ that?” _

“I’ll calm down enough to switch back  _ eventually,”  _ Crowley said, leaving off the suspicion that the eventuality might have to be Aziraphale’s restoration to complete health. “And I don’t want—what I mean is, this is my  _ fault,  _ I’m the one who bit you.”

“I  _ asked  _ you to,” Aziraphale pointed out.

“Yeah, well, anyway,” Crowley said, “I’m not letting you deal with this  _ alone.” _

Aziraphale’s face softened. “Oh, my dear, it’s only an  _ inconvenience,  _ really.”

“Still,” Crowley said, “who knows how long you’ll have to wait in A&E, I expect you could do with some company.”

“All right,” said Aziraphale. “Come along, then.”

So they emerged from the tube stop nearest the hospital a few minutes later, Aziraphale once again fully clothed and carrying a large grocery bag that was doing its best not to wiggle. Crowley had calmed down at least a bit since they’d left the bookshop, but repeated attempts to assume a less scaly form had, as yet, borne no fruit.

The woman who checked them in at the front desk gave the bag a slightly suspicious look, but thankfully didn’t ask any questions that necessitated  _ outright  _ lying. In the waiting room, Aziraphale settled into a chair, clutching the bag in his lap.

“Well?” he murmured down at Crowley. “Feeling calmer now?”

Crowley took stock. “A bit,” he said. 

“I’m going to be  _ fine,”  _ Aziraphale said, “there’s no need for you to fret.”

“I’m not  _ fretting,”  _ Crowley insisted. 

“Do you think you can switch back now?”

“D’you want me to try  _ here?  _ What are you going to tell the humans if it  _ works? Oh, don’t mind me, brought my husband along in a grocery bag, just thought I’d let him out for some air?” _

“No,” said Aziraphale, in his I-don’t-have-time-to-tell-you-how-stupid-you-are-but-I-want-you-to-know-anyway voice, “I  _ thought  _ that, if you were ready, I could take you into the gents’ and you could change back there.”

“Oh,” said Crowley. “Good thinking.”

“That  _ is  _ something of which I’m occasionally capable,” Aziraphale said. “Worth a gander, then?”

“Sure, yeah,” Crowley said. He  _ was  _ feeling calmer, had been since they’d walked in. The medical humans would be able to help, surely, even if they couldn’t exactly  _ fix  _ what was wrong with Aziraphale’s neck they should at least be able to relieve the pain, and eventually Crowley’s powers would return, and he could draw out the venom and it would be like the whole thing had never even happened. Hopefully.

“Right, then,” said Aziraphale, and carried him gently into the bathroom, which was mercifully empty except for them. 

Crowley slithered out of the bag, trying not to think about all the germs he was probably picking up off the tile floor.

“You  _ are  _ lovely like this, you know,” Aziraphale said, reaching out a hand to stroke Crowley gently on the head.

“All right, enough of that,” Crowley said, only managing not to blush because his current form lacked the ability. “You’ll only get me all flustered again.”

“Right, yes, sorry,” Aziraphale said, “I’ll be quiet, then, shall I?”

“Thanks,” said Crowley, and took a moment, and closed his eyes, and re-opened them to a vantage point about six feet higher than it had been previously.

“Oh,  _ splendid,”  _ said Aziraphale.

Crowley barely heard him. He hadn’t gotten properly close to Aziraphale’s neck since the immediate aftermath of the bite, and the swelling had either gotten worse in the intervening time, or it had always been more serious than he’d realized.

“Angel,” he said, tilting his head to examine the bite more closely, “that looks  _ terrible.”  _

“Yes,” said Aziraphale testily, “and it  _ feels  _ terrible, too, so please can we go back and wait for a doctor?”

“Yeah,” said Crowley, “right, best thing, probably.”

He couldn’t keep from sneaking glances at Aziraphale’s neck as they returned to the waiting room, though (and not in the way he normally did, which involved idle daydreams about nuzzling into it). The angry flush of red had radiated outwards, covering a portion of his jaw and disappearing down into his collar. Aziraphale was confining his visible reactions to an occasional wince, but Crowley could read worry in the lines of his face, the same worry that was pulsing through Crowley:  _ what if this doesn’t get fixed? _

Which, Crowley told himself firmly, settling back into his seat, was ridiculous. He’d be fully operational again in a matter of hours. They just had to wait it out, minimize the pain till they were able to dismiss it entirely.

He’d just about convinced himself of this when he became aware that Aziraphale was squirming around in his chair.

“What’s wrong?” Crowley asked, under his breath. “The injury can’t have spread  _ that _ much, can it?”

“It’s not the injury,” Aziraphale muttered back. “It’s—ah—well, you  _ do  _ remember that half the reason we were doing this in the first place was because of some of the, ah, the  _ other  _ properties of your venom.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, “the aphrodisiac bit, I know, I was there.”

“Yes, well,” Aziraphale said, voice strained, “it appears that  _ those  _ properties are now beginning to take effect.”

Crowley instinctively looked down. “Oh,” he said.

“Yes, rather,” said Aziraphale, and shifted again. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any clever ideas for how to fix  _ this?” _

“I mean, just the one,” Crowley said. “D’you think we’ve got time to go back to the loo—”

“Mr. Fell?” a clipboard-carrying doctor called from the doorway. “We’re ready for you now.”

“Apparently not,” Aziraphale said, and stood up with evident care.

“You sure you—”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale. “I can—handle it _.” _

He followed after the doctor, who led them down the corridor towards the exam rooms. Crowley lingered behind them a bit, until he realized that the way he was watching Aziraphale’s slightly unnatural gait might well cause a reciprocal problem for  _ Crowley,  _ and that seemed like a truly unnecessary complication at this juncture.

“So,” said the doctor, closing the door behind her, “what brings you in today, Mr. Fell?”

“Snake bite,” Aziraphale said, perching on the exam table. “Seems to have been an allergic reaction.”

“I can see that,” the doctor said. “May I?” She motioned to Aziraphale’s neck.

“Oh, please, yes, of course.”

There was a brief pause while the doctor looked over the wound. 

“I will say it’s a bit odd to see a snake bite on the  _ neck,”  _ she said, stepping back after a few moments. “Was it a pet snake that bit you?”

Crowley was only barely able to stifle his snort of laughter.

“Erm,” said Aziraphale, glaring daggers at him, “not exactly. It’s a...a friend’s snake.”

“It’s not a bite pattern I recognize,” said the doctor, “though, can’t say I see too many snake bites around here, so that doesn’t mean much. Do you know what species of snake it was?”

“A big one?” Aziraphale offered feebly.

Crowley almost piped up before realizing that not only did he not know the proper name for whatever his snake species was, he  _ also  _ had no idea whether or not he was supposed to be extinct. Bit of a fix they’d be in if Aziraphale claimed he’d been attacked by a literal dinosaur. (Crowley  _ loved  _ Jurassic Park, but he had no intention of contributing to a real version via his ancient DNA.) Was this something he should know more about? Cultural history, or whatnot? 

“Well,” the doctor was saying, “I’ll just run some bloodwork on you, see if we can find anything out that way, and in the meantime I’ll fetch some ibuprofen to bring down the swelling.”

While the doctor pricked Aziraphale’s finger, Crowley wondered idly what sort of results his blood might turn up. His body was human enough, and what was being squeezed into the collection tube certainly looked plenty mundane, but there was really no telling what sorts of things just weren’t  _ quite  _ right about their corporations. (Or, well. In Crowley’s case, at least one of those things was abundantly clear to anyone who saw him without his sunglasses.)

“I’ll be back in a bit,” the doctor said, and then they were alone.

Aziraphale let out a sort of choked sigh and wriggled against the exam table. 

“Still—ah, indisposed?” Crowley asked sympathetically.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “It’s your fault, you know, there’s no need to be all solicitous about it.”

“You know,” Crowley said, thoughtfully, “I’m pretty sure that if you actually—er, get relief, the venom’ll stop working. You’d be able to do miracles again, I mean, and you could fix that up right as rain.”

“Are you suggesting that we—”

“Well,” Crowley said, in his best Temptation Voice (a voice he had never actually used for an official temptation, but which tended to come out around Aziraphale, particularly these days), “we’ve got an empty room and a few minutes, so.”

“Oh, you’re making it sound  _ so  _ appealing,” Aziraphale said acerbically, but his eyes flitted down to his lap. 

“Or, of course,” Crowley continued, really getting into it now, “we could just wait it out. I mean, it didn’t work the way we thought it would to begin with, there’s no reason to think that’ll  _ actually  _ mend matters. Probably safer to see what the doctor says to do about the pain, and then have me fix it for good once I’ve recovered. Forget I mentioned it.”

Aziraphale glanced downwards again, then back up at Crowley, who was barely keeping back a grin. “Oh, do let’s try it,” he said, voice turning slightly ragged. “Hair of the dog, I suppose.”

“Well. Tongue of the snake. Same difference.”

“Are you going to keep talking,” Aziraphale demanded, “or are you actually going to—”

“Right,” said Crowley, “brilliant, let me just—” He sank down, and fumbled at Aziraphale’s waistband, and proceeded to set about redeeming himself for this whole sorry mess.

Judging by the way Aziraphale flopped back against the exam table and sighed happily a short while later, Crowley rather thought he’d succeeded. 

“Oh,  _ thank  _ you,” Aziraphale said, reaching forward to smooth down Crowley’s hair. “I feel  _ ever  _ so much better.”

“Absolutely no trouble at all,” said Crowley, “literally anytime.”

“I know,” said Aziraphale, and smiled  _ very  _ softly.

“Hey, though,” Crowley said, after a minute or an hour or a few hundred years of basking in warm smile-sunlight, “did it work, though, can you—”

“Oh!” said Aziraphale, “yes, I’d almost—” He snapped his fingers, and was once again clean and fully clothed. 

Crowley leaned over to inspect the wound on his neck. “Still hurt?”

“Not  _ nearly  _ as much,” Aziraphale said, “but I’d better—” He snapped again, and the redness and swelling disappeared entirely.

“You’ve left the bite marks,” Crowley said, running a finger over them.

Aziraphale’s smile took on a slightly different cast. “Don’t you like them? I thought they rather suited.”

“Mmm,” Crowley said, and bent to kiss the punctures. “Very much so.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” Aziraphale said, voice growing high again. 

“Well, Mr. Fell,” said the doctor, closing the door behind her as she entered, “I know you came in for a snake bite, but actually your blood work’s turned up some  _ really  _ unusual stuff that’s frankly a good deal more concerning than a little allergic reaction, I mean, I’ve never seen  _ ichor  _ on a lab result form before—”

“Oh, bother,” said Aziraphale, and snapped.

The doctor blinked. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t—oh, Mr. Fell, you’re free to go, glad it’s cleared up.”

“Me too,” said Aziraphale with utter sincerity. “Thank you  _ ever  _ so much.”

“Was I going to…” the doctor started, then trailed off. “Never mind.”

“Have a lovely day,” Aziraphale said, hopping off the bed. “Let’s go, dear, before she catches on, I went with rather a light hand because I didn’t want her to get  _ too  _ confused—”

“Right-o,” said Crowley, and followed him through the corridor to the nearest exit.

“Well,  _ that’s  _ over with,” Aziraphale said, once they were back outside.

“Yeah,” said Crowley. “Tried it, didn’t work out, ‘s not a problem, I’ve got  _ lots  _ of other ideas—”

“Oh,” Aziraphale cut in, “oh, I don’t know that we need  _ entirely  _ abandon this idea.”

Crowley stared at him blankly. “You’re allergic to my venom.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale admitted, “but, you know, I don’t see any reason we can’t figure out some way to make do. Now that we know how to end it.”

“You really—” Crowley squinted at him. “Wow. Okay. Well. I mean, I guess your neck  _ does  _ only have bite marks on  _ one  _ side, so…”

“Symmetry’s very important,” Aziraphale said, his mouth looking as though it might in fact cause butter to  _ solidify  _ upon entrance. 

“Oh,” said Crowley, already eyeing a likely-looking patch of unbroken skin, “oh, it  _ definitely  _ is.”

**Author's Note:**

> Check out [ the adorable illustration](https://georginabulsara.tumblr.com/post/612891488964214784/the-scene-that-made-me-giggle-in-may-cause) that georginabulsara did on Tumblr!


End file.
